No, don’t do that either.

by Mike

I don’t want to spend all my time poking fun with the benefit of hindsight, but here’s another thing that looks truly ridiculous. A lot of thought has gone into it, as well as careful planning of the procedure… but really.

“Now, I’m not a scientist, John, but that sounds like quite a bad idea. Without wanting to use the term ‘obvious crackpot,’ there is something about fighting a major disease by giving yourself another major disease that just doesn’t feel quite right. Treating AIDS with malaria, John, to me, is along the lines of dealing with losing your favorite socks by chainsawing your feet off.”

That isn’t quite fair; it makes sense that one infectious organism could be used to fight off another. In the case of malaria, by inducing a fever that may enhance the immune response against viruses that don’t normally induce fevers.

But this is just not going to work, any more than Saccharomyces could cure typhoid back in 1891. Neisseria gonorrhoeae is not just a superficial growth on the surface of the mucous membranes — it grows inside cells. And this treatment is supposedly happening in patients with “chronic” gonorrhea, which has already spread to the cervix and quite possibly other organs outside the reproductive system? That makes it an even worse idea.

Just as the phrase “fight fire with fire” does not apply to actual fires, we should not try to fight vaginitis with more vaginitis.